


An Icy Reprieve

by radiantbaby



Series: My Martha/Ten 'doctorwho_100' Fics [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Episode: s03e07 42, Established Relationship, F/M, doctorwho_100
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 01:44:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1571381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiantbaby/pseuds/radiantbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events on the SS Pentallian, the Doctor tries to deal with his resultant emotions from what happened to him there, while also trying to come to terms with his growing affection for Martha. [Ten/Martha]</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Icy Reprieve

**Author's Note:**

> [This is an older fic from January 2009, but I'm working on posting all my fics here on AO3]
> 
> This story takes place after the events of my story [Exploring the Universe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1563776), but can also be read on its own [with the concept in mind that this is about an already established romantic relationship, even if it is still in the early stages, natch]. 
> 
> Thank you to my betas **persiflage** and **fourzoas**!
> 
> _[Written for[my table](http://cantadora.livejournal.com/15089.html#cutid1) at the LJ comm **'doctorwho_100'** \-- 'Prompt: 44. Sun.']_

Cold. Alone.

The needles of bitter-cold water seem to almost poke and prickle his skin as it rushes in waves over his body’s insistent residual warmth, leaving him shivering in the spray of the shower.

_Cold — yes, a deeply desired icy reprieve, he muses._

It’s been less than an hour since they’d left the SS Pentallian, but he is still rather far from any renewed sense of calm or, more importantly, any palpable escape from the horrid heat still lingering within tiny indiscriminate parts of his limbs, like a relentless virus just _clinging_ to him.

The sun-borne entity had pushed itself inside him, overwhelming him as it pressed everything that he was to the edges of his consciousness, as if to squeeze his very essence from him out through the ancient cracks left by his past sorrows and pain --

What lingered now was not only the relief from its elimination, but the fear that it had been so very close to taking him over completely.

(And that a part of him — somewhere deep, somewhere _damaged_ — likes that).

\+ + +

He can sense her— his Martha — in the next room, waiting and worried for him, though the words for this will never pass between them, the two of them too stubborn to give voice to the truth of feelings held within.

Part of him wants to run _from_ her, ashamed by his moment of weakness before her that day, and part of him wants run _to_ her, to hide within her curled wings of sheltering affection.

He feels more unsure about himself than he thinks he ever has before --

And he hates himself for it.

\+ + +

He stands there frozen, fist raised in mid-air, poised before rapping against her closed door, contemplating.

When had he let her get so far under his skin? When did he blink and find her so close that she had insinuated herself into every fibre of his being? And when did it come to be that she burned within him like that sun had, mining his insides, carving him inside out, leaving so little that was recognizable left?

He thought he could pretend that his fear had been solely from the alien parasitic entity that had pushed itself within him, _violating him._

But the truth is, what he is really afraid of -- more than anything in this moment -- is his (deepening) feelings for her.

_I’m scared, I’m so scared._

\+ + +

He pushes himself inside her, trying to even the score, trying to fill her completely as he’d been filled, overwhelm her completely the way he’d been overwhelmed —

_\-- Burn her the way he’d burnt (for her)._

When she cries a bit at the end -- likely startled by his uncharacteristically rough seduction — he feels almost as if it is a small victory, her tears exposing the bits of herself slipping through her own cracks, showing him that she is broken too, and that he is not alone (in this).

She sleeps in her own bed, in her own room, that night, but he is soon behind her, beside her, with a fountain of whispered apologies and gentle caresses to help counteract her fears of the storm — _his (Oncoming) storm_ \-- from earlier.

She is reticent, unsure, but she lets him in, and in those hours, in the dark of her room, their broken pieces perhaps finally fit together a bit better now.  



End file.
